Welcome to The People Insider — a weekly brief for anyone who employs people in South Africa.

Every Wednesday: one headline, one tool, one leadership story, one stat and one question. Under five minutes. No fluff. Let's get into it.

SHRM's 2026 Talent Trends Report just landed, based on a survey of over 2,000 HR professionals worldwide. The headline finding won't surprise anyone who's tried to fill a role recently: 4 in 10 HR professionals reported difficulty retaining full-time employees in the past 12 months.

As skills gaps widen and external recruitment gets more expensive, the report argues that it might be better to invest in internal mobility, upskilling, apprenticeships and mentorship instead.

In SA, this isn't theory, it's already happening

ITWeb reported that 81% of HR professionals in South Africa now prioritise reskilling over external hiring. The "bootcamp-as-a-benefit" model is growing; companies are paying for industry-aligned training in AI or cybersecurity to fill gaps internally, without the risk of external hiring. Career-switchers and junior staff are being upskilled into roles that would've gone to an outside candidate two years ago.

We have 118,000 unfilled tech jobs and 31% unemployment. Those two numbers sitting next to each other should tell you that we don't have a talent shortage. We have a development problem.

What this looks like in practice

For a 50-person SA business, internal mobility doesn't mean building a corporate talent marketplace. It means asking: who on my team is capable of more than their current role? Who has the relationships, the institutional knowledge, the judgement, but just needs the skills to unlock more?

Your office manager, who's been running ops for three years, might be your next project lead. Your customer service rep who handles escalations better than anyone might be your future team lead. The skills can be taught. The trust, the context and the relationships take years to build and seconds to lose when you retrench someone.

SA's largest private employer (170,000 people) wanted to source hyper-local talent, so, in partnership with SA SMME OTB Group, they built apply.shoprite.jobs. It’s a centralised recruitment platform that matches candidates to stores closest to their homes.

Their initial target was 15km, but they found that in practice, sourcing from within just 7km proved better. Shorter commutes mean lower transport costs, better attendance and stronger retention. Shoprite created 8,723 new jobs last financial year using the platform.

The question worth sitting with: If proximity drives retention, what would change about how you hire?

Up to 200%

of their annual salary is how much it costs to replace some employees nowadays. For technical roles, it's around 80%. For frontline workers, 40%. SHRM puts the baseline at six to nine months' salary for most roles. And that's before you count the institutional knowledge, client relationships, and team trust that walk out the door with them.

Source: Gallup, 2026

Got an event SA employers should know about? Reply and tell us.

Know someone who employs people?
Forward this to one person who should be reading this.